


Joey's beside himself with worry

by Hello_Im_not_a_possum



Series: Tumblr Requests [4]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Hell's Studio Universe, Into The Joeyverse, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:54:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29281035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hello_Im_not_a_possum/pseuds/Hello_Im_not_a_possum
Summary: Anon: 67 with hell's studio67. I’m afraid.
Series: Tumblr Requests [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061771
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Joey's beside himself with worry

Joey deeply regretted casting the spell he just used.

Not that it was a terrible spell, or a spell that had misfired, oh no. He regretting casting that spell because it had done exactly what it was meant to do: Show him how he was in other realities.

The more ‘Alternate Universes’ he saw, the more guilty he felt. He saw himself, many different versions of himself ruining the lives of the people he held dear to his heart, he saw these heartless, grinning abominations of men who shared his name and voice (but only rarely his face, they almost never used his face. That was something he was grateful for.) throwing their employees into the machine in the name of selfishly achieving his own dreams.

It’s bad enough knowing that in a large majority of the multiverse, you’re the villain, but it’s even worse knowing that the second most common role you filled was the accidental villain.

Over time, he could get unfazed but still be disgusted with Joeys who kept their employees working for them by publicly outing them and getting them blacklisted everywhere but the studio. He could gag at Joeys who knowingly and willingly turned their Henries into Bendies on the grounds that because he “betrayed” them, self-sacrifice was the ‘least he could do’ to make up for it but still appreciate that at least he’d never resort to doing that even if he could. Sometimes he could even laugh at these terrible Joeys when they received their karma, even when he felt guilty about their own studio employees’ fates.

But what really kept him awake at night were those ‘good’ Joeys who could still be the villain if you looked closely enough.

A Joey who was just trying to save his Henry’s life from ending at the hands of a deadly disease had accidentally started a zombie outbreak.

A Joey who lived in a world of monsters and did everything in his power to help them whenever he could had ripped a raven monster (that universe’s Sammy) away from his home, everything he loved and knew, and even his own body in the name of helping a pack of his werewolf employees. And while that monster wasn’t exactly the kindest creature, he mostly just kept to himself and didn’t bother humanity unless they trespassed in his territory, as animals often do.

A Joey who had his employees’ best interests at heart had intentionally turned them into ink creatures ‘so that they could live forever’.

And don’t get him started on the sheer amount of Joeys who had *almost* had a situation like his own, but took a drastic left turn at Albuquerque which made everything worse.

Universes where he couldn’t fix the mistakes he made, Universes where he thought he fixed things, only to make them even worse, Universes where in spite of his best interests and genuinely good nature, his magic had brought nothing but misery.

The Joey on the other side of the mirror he used for the spell stopped what he was doing, looked at the mirror and frowned. Not in an evil or malicious way, but in a concerned way. Like how a grandfather frowns when his grandchild comes to him with a terrible cut. This Joey reminded him of a grandfather who his grandchildren would call a wizard. He certainly had the long, snow-white beard and the large, gold-rimmed glasses for it.

“Is something the matter, other me?” The other Joey asked as he gently knocked on the glass surface. “I can hear your crying all the way from my side of the mirror.”

“Huh? O-oh!” Joey sputtered as he quickly wiped the tears from his eyes. “I suppose there is…” He paused for a minute, almost scared to tell the other Joey his feelings but at the same time, that face was just not a face one could lie to. “…I’m afraid.”

“Of yourself in general or how it feels like one misstep could send you and everyone who happens to work at your studio who you care about into an inky nightmare world with no escape?”

“Both.”

“Both?” The Mirror Joey’s concerned frown deepened, but now he also looked intrigued. “Well do you want to talk about it with me?”

“I guess so.”

“You’re ‘Hell’s Studio’’s Joey, correct?” Joey asked as he adjusted his glasses. “I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.”

“A lot of good things?! But all I’ve done lately is mess things up and only manage to put them back together by the skin of my teeth!”

“We all have our bad days my other, but that does not make us bad people.”

“We do, but I’ve lost count of the times somebody in my studio has turned into something inhuman or has changed and gotten hurt because of me, my stupid machine, and my ink.”

“And it seems like you’ve also forgotten the number of times that you have done your best to make things right again, and have done everything in your power to protect and help your employees.”

“Huh?”

“Magic, creativity, and ambitions are not what makes a Joey a bad apple, my friend. Selfishness, unchecked apathy, and lying with malicious intent is what makes a Joey a bad apple. It’s normal to mess up, Hell’s studio, it’s normal to feel guilty when you do. In fact, I’d even say that it’s normal to feel like a villain when you see all of these bad apple Joeys. But know that what separates you from the bad apples is that every time your studio and your ink try to steer down the path of nightmares, even for just one person, you take the wheel and steer it back on coarse.”

“But what about the good Joeys who still went down villainous paths but didn’t fix it?”

“Did they really not fix it,” The Mirror Joey smiled a bit before switching the mirror’s view to a different universe, the one where a Joey started the zombie apocalypse, specifically, to the Joey in question working in a lab. “Or did you simply not see them try to fix it?”

As Joey took a closer look at what his other self was showing him, he could see that the zombie outbreak Joey was working on the antidote with a team of survivors!

The Mirror changed again, changed to show the universe where Joey had stolen the Raven-monster Sammy. It showed Joey and Sammy having a long, heart-to-heart discussion about their strange situations and potential solutions on how to fix and or adapt to what had happened.

The Mirror changed a third time, to the universe where Joey turned everybody into ink monsters on purpose. It seems that now he, Henry, Tom, and Allison were working together to stop the ink machine, having now being freed from it’s influence.

“…Of course, it helps when you don’t bottle up your emotions and work with your employees.” the Mirror Joey added as he changed the mirror back to his room. “It’s not healthy to let your guilt build up without an outlet, you know.”

“I… Thank you other me. I really needed that.”

“Anytime, Hell’s Studio, anytime.”


End file.
